Throughout my college years I enjoyed a college deferment, until graduating and losing my deferment in 1969, before the lottery in December of that year. This made me subject to the draft–my eventual high lottery number did not yet apply. So I was called to report to an induction center.
As a child I had a serious injury, which was eventually reported to the Selective Service, and made part of my permanent record. Meanwhile I was studying up on my rights at a Quaker reading room in Kansas City. When I was called up I knew I could petition my draft board to allow me to have a physical exam with a local doctor, rather than shipping me several hundred miles to an induction center, since my permanent residence was in a small town in far western Kansas. The draft board agreed but informed my father, in no uncertain terms, that he would have to pay the cost of the physical exam. He gladly complied.
The physician who examined me, as happens in many small towns, was also the physician who had delivered me at birth. (It had been an easy delivery, except the physician missed that my mother continued to bleed after my birth, and she almost died as a result). When the doctor examined me he said: "You don’t want to go off to Vietnam, do you?" I replied that I did not. He then reported back to the draft board that in addition to my well-documented childhood injuries, I also had a bad back, middle ear problems, and a couple of other conditions.
The draft board took his report under advisement, and eventually reclassified me I-Y, having a medical condition but subject to call-up in the event of a declared war or national emergency. They also required me to submit an annual physical report that my condition had not changed. My girlfriend at the time asked if maybe the draft board thought that my serious injury from childhood might miraculously disappear! Interestingly, over the course of the years since 1969 the doctor’s medical predictions have come true. I do have a weak spot in my back and have suffered some middle ear problems. Anyway, in 1971 the I-Y became IV-F, and I no longer needed to report.